Brad Keselowski: “Too Many Road Courses in NASCAR”

What’s Happening?

2012 Cup Champion and current driver-owner Brad Keselowski created quite a stir on X today with a post he made. In his post, he says that it is possible that there will be as many as 7 road courses on the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series schedule. He also laments that NASCAR was built on oval racing since its inception in 1949. Meanwhile, IMSA is a NASCAR-owned, road racing series built exclusively for road courses. He said that IMSA will always do road course racing better than NASCAR and has made his peace with that. His ultimate conclusion was that, yes, there are too many road course races on the NASCAR schedule.

• As referenced in the post, for decades, there were only two road course races on the NASCAR schedule, those two races being Sonoma and Watkins Glen. Since 2018, the Roval was added in the fall, bringing the total up to 3. That was the norm until 2021, when two more were added to the schedule. In 2022, there were 7 road course races on the NASCAR schedule, a high in series history.
• The number of road course races on the NASCAR schedule has been a subject of debate for many years now. Older and more traditional fans feel that there’s an oversaturation of road course races on the NASCAR schedule. Meanwhile, many more modern fans like the addition of road course races on the schedule.
• If a 7th road course race is added to the schedule in 2026, it is unclear what it will be. Portland and Lime Rock both hosted lower division NASCAR races in 2025. It is possible that it could be either one of them. On the other hand, NASCAR has raced at Road America and the Indianapolis road course in the past. There’s also talk about taking the Cup Series to Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal next year.

What do you think about this? Do you agree with Brad Keselowski’s take that there are too many road course races on the NASCAR schedule? Let us know your opinion on Discord or X. Don’t forget that you can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.